American sprinter Gabby Thomas' stance on 'doping coaches' is audacious, but starts valid conversation

Give Gabby Thomas credit for standing by her inflammatory words.

The triple Olympic gold medallist from the U.S. could have deleted the blazing hot take she posted to her Instagram stories this past Tuesday, then disavowed her own statement, or dissembled instead of explaining herself in plain English.

But she didn't do any of that. She let that post stay on Instagram, in full view of her 1.1 million followers and countless more lurkers and drive-by viewers. Yes, IG stories expire after 24 hours, but the screenshots will live forever, or at least until data centres have drained us of our last drop of clean water.

It's tough to tell what, exactly, prompted Thomas to vent, but the world champion and Harvard grad wanted all of us to know she's fed up with track and field drug cheats, along with their enablers.

"Doping coaches should be banned for life from coaching in the sport. Whether you were banned while competing as an athlete or caught distributing as a coach [for some, both]," she wrote. "Idc idc idc … If you train under a coach who is known for doping … you are complicit."

Those accusations are backhanded and broad, but they're also straight-forward and specific. And the solution she proposes is audacious if you're a fan of Gabby Thomas, or draconian if she's not on your favourites list. Your reaction to her online comments likely depends as heavily on how you feel about her as it does on your stance toward doping.

But she is describing an extreme scenario. Imagine MLB fining and suspending Blue Jays manager John Schneider last year after Orelvis Martinez tested positive for clomiphene. Thomas' solution is far-fetched and likely unworkable.

She has a point, though.

Testing can catch PED users after they've taken drugs, especially if they've been careless about it. But maybe we should brainstorm ways to stop doping closer to the source. If you've grown up under the metric measurement system you know that a gram of prevention beats a kilo of cure.

So perhaps we can add a layer of accountability by treating athletes, coaches, agents and support staff as a unit when it comes to drug offences. Maybe you'll reconsider taking, prescribing or recommending PEDs if you know that one positive test won't just derail your career – it can torpedo an entire business.

The internet, of course, amplifies that dynamic across all sports. Contemporary NBA coverage, with its intense-focus on off-season transactions is like LinkedIn, the career-minded social network, where nothing drives pageviews and engagements like changing jobs. And online track coverage is more like a TikTok comments section, where facts are matter, but mainly as prompts to spark debate and speculation.

The online track and field reactosphere quickly lit up with discussions about who, exactly, Thomas targeted with her "doping coaches" jab. Several creators and commenters have concluded her post was a shot at Dennis Mitchell, who coaches a deep roster of superstars, including Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, the current world leader in the women's 100 metres.

And if you think of Thomas as the 200 metre gold medallist who, like most other sprinters on the planet this year, has lost ground to Jefferson-Wooden, it makes sense. In this setup, Thomas would be like Drake in the UMG lawsuit.

"My numbers are legit, and anybody who beats me is cheating."

And if Thomas' beef is with dopers turned coaches, Mitchell, technically, qualifies. It's a point of fact that he once got popped for testosterone, then offered one of the longest-shot excuses on record: too much beer and sex the night before the test.

But it's also possible that Thomas is just tired and frustrated and brainstorming for answers after a summer full of lousy doping news.

Last month the Athletics Integrity Unit provisionally suspended Ruth Chepng'etich, the world record holder in the women's marathon, after a positive test for a banned diuretic.

Tuesday hit us with a one-two: Ukrainian long and triple jumper Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk earned a four-year suspension for testosterone, and Indian middle distance phenom Parjev Khan was hit with a six-year ban for a combination of missed and failed drug screenings.

If your favourite sport had an attrition rate like that, you'd want change, too. And if you were a competitor, watching your sport's rep take a beating, you might be fed up enough to post about it on social media.

To Thomas' point, the AIU's Sanctions List currently includes no athletes from Canada but 127 from India and 137 more from Kenya. If you're reasonably sceptical that all those athletes decided, as individuals, without a coach's knowledge to take PEDs, then you're justified in wondering whether, and how often, doping decisions are made further up the food chain. If Thomas had called on sanctioning brewers and taco trucks over positive drug tests, I'd tell her to get a grip. But she said we should crack down on coaches, and I say we should explore what's possible.

The problem, of course, is that training groups contain an assortment of goals and motives and moral compasses, and clean athletes often work alongside people who decide to dope. Blessing Okagbare and Divine Oduduru are both serving suspensions for doping infractions they racked up back in 2021, when they shared a coach with sprinters – like Andre De Grasse and Trayvon Bromell – that most of us would bet large sums have never touched a PED. Punishing clean athletes because their training partners dope is just as unfair as letting cheaters win.

So it's possible that Thomas didn't think her proposal all the way through, but it doesn't matter because she did two big things right.

She erred on the side of fairness, and she started a conversation, which nudges a little closer to a solution.